Back to my normal after Neowise. Solar from 10th, 11th and 12th July 2020

[Nigella Bryant]

Hi all, back into my comfort zone after imaging comet Neowise. Here are images from the 10th, 11th and 12th of July 2020. Struggled a little with the processing must have been because I'd changed to Deep Sky Tracker for the comet instead of Autostakker for Solar, lol.  Lunt 60mm DS, Zwo Asi 178mm. Autostakker3, ImPPG and Phtoshop CS2.

[nfotis]

Nice. I suppose that you used a barlow in order to fill with the solar disk?

Or the ASI178 did offer a tight enough shot?

N.F.

 

[Nigella Bryant]

4 minutes ago, nfotis said:

Nice. I suppose that you used a barlow in order to fill with the solar disk?

Or the ASI178 did offer a tight enough shot?

N.F.

 

The 178 provides full disk, no need to barlow.

[inFINNity Deck]

Very nice, so much to see. Here in the Netherlands (and Belgium) it was Sun Watching Day on the 5th. On that day public and private observatories were open all day (some only virtually) to allow people to have a look at our nearest star. And guess what? There was nothing to be seen, apart from a tiny prominence the size of half an Earth diameter... a whole difference with what you have captured the past few days, thanks for sharing!

Nicolàs

PS: does the UK know something similar like Sun Watching Day?

[Nigella Bryant]

1 hour ago, inFINNity Deck said:

PS: does the UK know something similar like Sun Watching Day?

Hi, no we've nothing like that here in the UK.

[Peter Drew]

20 minutes ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Hi, no we've nothing like that here in the UK.

We ran a "solar day" for a couple of years at the Astronomy Centre,  a combination of not much to see and low attendance caused it to fizzle out.  

[Nigella Bryant]

1 hour ago, inFINNity Deck said:

Very nice, so much to see. Here in the Netherlands (and Belgium) it was Sun Watching Day on the 5th. On that day public and private observatories were open all day (some only virtually) to allow people to have a look at our nearest star. And guess what? There was nothing to be seen, apart from a tiny prominence the size of half an Earth diameter... a whole difference with what you have captured the past few days, thanks for sharing!

Nicolàs

Hi Nicolas, I've looked back through my image's because I thought I'd images the sun on the 5th July. This is what I got. Quite a bit of activity.

[Rusted]

What's this nonsense about Solar imaging?

Can a dewshield double as a rain hat? 

Thought not.

BTW: Nice images!

 

[inFINNity Deck]

10 hours ago, Nigella Bryant said:

Hi Nicolas, I've looked back through my image's because I thought I'd images the sun on the 5th July. This is what I got. Quite a bit of activity.

 

Hi Nigella,

indeed quite a bit of activity, once again a nice image! I did not attempt imaging the sun that day, but through the standard Lunt zoom-eyepiece we could only see granulation and a very small prominence (like the one at 12 o'clock in your image). I adjusted the single-stack pressure tuner several times, but failed to see much more than that. What we saw through a Quark on a stopped-down 150mm Newton was very similar (it was stopped down to 80mm). In addition we had two refractors with Baader filter (apertures of 110mm and 150mm, the former was used visually, the latter in combination with a ZWO ASI1600MM Cool Pro). Both of them only showed granulation.

So apparently we can capture more detail with a camera on a H-alpha telescope than we can visually in both H-alpha and white-light. Is this also your experience?

Nicolàs

[Nigella Bryant]

6 hours ago, inFINNity Deck said:

Hi Nigella,

indeed quite a bit of activity, once again a nice image! I did not attempt imaging the sun that day, but through the standard Lunt zoom-eyepiece we could only see granulation and a very small prominence (like the one at 12 o'clock in your image). I adjusted the single-stack pressure tuner several times, but failed to see much more than that. What we saw through a Quark on a stopped-down 150mm Newton was very similar (it was stopped down to 80mm). In addition we had two refractors with Baader filter (apertures of 110mm and 150mm, the former was used visually, the latter in combination with a ZWO ASI1600MM Cool Pro). Both of them only showed granulation.

So apparently we can capture more detail with a camera on a H-alpha telescope than we can visually in both H-alpha and white-light. Is this also your experience?

Nicolàs

Hi, I can see more detail using a mono camera on a laptop screen so that could be better for outreach, also more people can see at the same time. 

[inFINNity Deck]

Hi Nigella,

thanks for the confirmation. During these events I have rarely more than 2 people in the observatory at the same time and for an hour, so plenty of time for everyone. But the fact that we can see more using the camera than visual only now occurred to me. When I want to image the sun I always do so with the camera, so I never noticed that visually all those features are less clear.

Next year I will make the Esprit visual and the Lunt on display, that will work better.

Nicolàs

[Rusted]

If you want to impress with outreach then use a larger computer monitor but make sure it is well shielded from the sun.
I routinely see sharp H-a images with the [partial] solar disk up to a meter in diameter on my 27" monitor. The same goes for the moon.

Viewing with an eyepiece requires lots of practice to see much at all.
I can prove this simply by using my left eye after decades of only using my right eye at the telescope.
My left eye is not "educated" to see anything much at the eyepiece.

[Pete Presland]

You have not lost your touch, a fine set of images.

[Nigella Bryant]

3 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

You have not lost your touch, a fine set of images.

Thanks Pete, night time imaging and processing is another set of skills I've yet to perfect so solar is my comfort zone, lol.

[richard ashbee]

very nice photos Nigella

[inFINNity Deck]

Nigella,

you are using the ASI178MM for your solar images and all seems just perfect. A Dutch amateur uses the same camera and gets horizontal banding, see below one of his images (I enlarged it by 400%, so every 4x4 pixels represents 1 pixel in the original). On the net I found several posts on a variety of fora that do mention these artefacts. Did you encounter them and, if so, how did you get rid of it?

Thanks!

Nicolàs

Edited August 6, 2020 by inFINNity Deck

[Nigella Bryant]

3 hours ago, inFINNity Deck said:

Nigella,

you are using the ASI178MM for your solar images and all seems just perfect. A Dutch amateur uses the same camera and gets horizontal banding, see below one of his images (I enlarged it by 400%, so every 4x4 pixels represents 1 pixel in the original). On the net I found several posts on a variety of fora that do mention these artefacts. Did you encounter them and, if so, how did you get rid of it?

Thanks!

Nicolàs

Hi Nicolas, I use a Rowan astronomy tilt plate that is permanently on the camera. You can see it between the camera and wedge in my pic.  

[inFINNity Deck]

I thought that that plate only was to avoid Newton rings? What I was referring to are these horizontal lines every other row of the image raster.

Nicolàs

[Nigella Bryant]

48 minutes ago, inFINNity Deck said:

I thought that that plate only was to avoid Newton rings? What I was referring to are these horizontal lines every other row of the image raster.

Nicolàs

Sorry Nicolas, never seen those on my imaging with my 178mm. I'm no expert but it's seems an artifact from the actual CMOS chip. 

[inFINNity Deck]

ok, thanks, good to know that not all ASI178MM suffer from this.

Nicolàs

 

[Nigella Bryant]

1 minute ago, inFINNity Deck said:

ok, thanks, good to know that not all ASI178MM suffer from this.

Nicolàs

 

Probably a quality control issue with the cmos chip. I would have sent it back.